


oh, i'm in trouble now

by fairyy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teachers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:46:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28274802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairyy/pseuds/fairyy
Summary: Dan looks up when he hears a slightly familiar voice, out of lazy interest. When he registers who it belongs to, his stomach drops.Of fucking course his hookup from last night works here. Knowing his luck, he should have expected it. He curses whatever god is up there and hopes he can go unnoticed.“I’m Phil. English teacher.”
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 14
Kudos: 80
Collections: Phandom Fic Fests Holiday Exchange 2020





	oh, i'm in trouble now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lestered (lgbtrobed)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lgbtrobed/gifts).



> i took a little liberty with the prompt, and i ended up not having as much time as i would have liked, but i hope you enjoy it. thank you to my lovely friends who read over this despite not being in phandom.
> 
> title from claudia by finneas.

Dan is so fucked. 

He spilled coffee on his shirt and had to change, and he doesn’t like this one as much. To make matters worse, he’s exhausted. He really should just never download Grindr again. 

The guy was cute and the sex was good, so that’s a plus at least, but he really does not need to be late on his first day. 

After months of dragging his feet, he’s finally found a job - as a secondary school receptionist. He has a headache just thinking about it. 

He applied on a bit of a whim, not actually expecting to hear anything back. But he had been offered the position and it’s not like he had many other options, so he couldn’t just say no. 

It’s almost as bad as he was expecting. All the paperwork is overwhelming, and the sounds of kids walking through the halls brings him back to his days in school, which he hates to think about. 

He buries his face in his hands. He needs the money, he reminds himself again.

It doesn’t make him feel any better. 

-

Dan looks up when he hears a slightly familiar voice, out of lazy interest. When he registers who it belongs to, his stomach drops.

Of fucking course his hookup from last night works here. Knowing his luck, he should have expected it. He curses whatever god is up there and hopes he can go unnoticed.

He can’t of course.

“This is Dan, it’s his first day. Replacing Kathleen, you know,” the old lady that works in the office with him says. She reminds him a bit of his nan, actually, but this is just awful.

His eyes widen when he notices Dan, but he recovers quickly.

“Hi, Dan,” he says, sticking out a hand. Dan takes it and tries very hard not to think about the fact that this hand was wrapped around his dick last night. “I’m Phil. English teacher.”

“Hello,” Dan says, politely, hoping his face isn’t giving anything away. 

Phil nods and takes his hand back. 

“I’ve got to run, papers to grade, you know how it is,” Phil says, a bit awkwardly. “See you later Janice!” he calls, and then he’s gone.

Dan certainly does not look at his ass in his nice trousers. Then the phone rings and Dan is distracted for the time being. 

-

Dan’s just packed up his things and is heading out the door when he hears Phil call his name. He turns around cautiously. 

“So,” Phil starts, eyes darting away.

“Yes?” Dan asks. He tries very hard not to focus on his bright blue eyes and artfully styled quiff. 

Phil looks down at his shoes. “This is a bit… awkward.”

Dan bristles. “Just a little,” he says. 

“I had no idea…” Phil trails off. “I had no idea you were going to be -” 

“How was I supposed to know you worked here?” Dan protests, feeling defensive. He crosses his arms over his chest, like a petulant toddler. “You could have at least mentioned that you were a fucking teacher.”

Phil shrugs. “It didn’t come up.”

Dan huffs a breath and resists rolling his eyes. 

“It doesn’t have to be awkward,” Phil offers, while still looking very awkward. 

“Right.” Dan pulls out his phone. If he doesn’t leave now, he’ll be late for the bus.

“I have to go,” he says, and leaves before Phil can respond.

-

Dan feels awful when he gets home. That’s not new of course, he feels awful approximately 92% of the time, but right now, he feels like utter shit.

He tosses his bag somewhere, not paying attention where it lands. His brain vaguely registers that he’s hungry, but he’s too tired to do anything about it.

He puts on a show he’s seen a thousand times and closes his eyes.

His back is stiff when he wakes up. The sun has already set, the only light in the room coming from the TV that’s still playing. 

He groans when he sits up, noticing the tension in his neck. He can’t ignore how hungry he is anymore, so he walks to the kitchen and flicks a light on, wincing at how bright it is. 

He heats up some leftover Chinese takeout in the microwave and shovels it into his mouth as soon as he takes it out.

The shower he takes turns cold almost as soon as he lets it heat up and he trips over a pile of clean laundry he never put away. God, this day can’t end soon enough. Maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll all have been a bad dream.

-

It is not, in fact, a bad dream. Dan’s alarm goes off stupidly early, and he curses his night owl tendencies. 

He’s straightening his hair when his mind drifts back to Phil.

“I don’t normally do this,” Phil had told him. 

Dan hummed from where he was kissing down Phil’s neck. “Okay,” he said. 

“Shut up,” Phil said, but his voice caught when Dan dragged his teeth over a spot below his jaw, so it didn’t have much of an effect. 

Dan shakes his head a little. If he thinks about it for too long, he’ll have another problem on his hands.

-

Dan half-hopes he’ll see Phil again. The other half of him wants to run away every time he even thinks about it. That part is winning so far.

He doesn’t see Phil for the rest of the week. If Dan was so mad about Phil working here, why is he disappointed?

His guard goes down a little, now that he’s not looking over his shoulder literally every moment. That’s a plus, he thinks.

Dan does not get used to the phone calls, the angry parents, or the dick of a headmaster who always wants his coffee a different way. 

He doesn’t get used to the way the environment makes him feel either. The sounds of kids in a secondary school brings him back to his time at secondary school. He’s half afraid one of them is going to come up to him and bring up everything he’s insecure about. 

None of them ever do, but it’s hard to shake the feeling.

-

Dan’s sorting out paperwork when Phil walks in the office. It’s the first real glimpse of him he’s seen since that first day. Phil’s chatting with another teacher as a few of them head into one of the conference rooms, not paying Dan any mind.

Which is great, really. Dan doesn’t want to look at him either. He has work to do, anyways.

He’s definitely not doing work when Phil comes back out of the meeting. He’s chewing on a pencil, zoning out.

“Hi Dan,” Phil says.

Dan quickly takes the pencil out of his mouth and gives Phil a nod. Phil smiles and walks out.

Dan looks back down at the pencil. It has chew marks on it. Fuck. 

-

Dan passes Phil a few more times, a friendly acknowledgement here and there. They never really get into a conversation, they never talk about that one night. It doesn’t stop Dan from wishing they would. Kind of.

Every time he seriously thinks about he just ends up wanting to bang his head on a hard surface. 

-

It’s chilly outside, but Dan braves the cold for a Starbucks run. He deserves it after this hell of a week, he thinks.

He’s been looking forward to the weekend, a blissful respite from the work week. He’s waiting for his caramel macchiato when he sees a familiar looking black quiff and slightly alien shaped head. What the fuck.

Dan is hoping he can just slip out before Phil sees him, but Phil turns. His face lights up when he sees Dan and he does a dorky little wave. Dan waves back.

He grabs his cup when the barista puts it on the counter. He should go over and say hi, he thinks. It would be rude not to. 

He clears his throat. “Um, hi.”

Phil gives him a smile and Dan’s stomach flutters a little. Fuck.

“Hey!”

“What are you doing here?” Dan asks, before he can really even think about it.

Phil gestures at the sprawl of papers he’s got all over the table. “Grading. I’m always grading.”

Of course he’s grading papers. He’s a fucking English teacher. “That sounds… fun.”

“It’s my least favorite part of the job, but it’s alright.”

Dan nods. He’s about to make his excuses to leave when Phil asks him if he wants to sit down.

“I need a break from this anyways,” he offers.

Dan says yes.

-

Dan learns that Phil has the same coffee order as he does, is almost as obsessed with video games as Dan is, and has a frankly horrific sweet tooth.

He also learns that Phil has a family he loves, a mum and dad who live up north, and a brother he sees fairly often. 

They don’t talk about the night they hooked up. 

Phil asks about Dan’s own family, and Dan doesn’t know how to answer without sounding bitter about it. 

“They’re fine,” he says eventually. Phil gives him a look like he knows that’s not entirely true, but he doesn’t push, and Dan is grateful. 

“How are you liking the school?” Phil asks gently.

Dan scrunches his face. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s a job. Not exactly what I thought I would be doing, but here we are. It’s better than ASDA, at least.”

“What did you think you would be doing.”

Dan takes a sip of his drink. “I went to uni for law, actually.”

Phil’s eyebrows raise. “Oh wow. Wouldn’t have pegged you as a law student.”

Dan laughs. It comes out harsher than he was expecting. “I wasn’t really. I dropped out after my first year. I would have be shit at it.”

Phil nods sympathetically. He pauses, clearly looking for the right words.

Dan doesn’t want to hear whatever is going to come out of his mouth, so he says “You like teaching then?”

Phil’s expression brightens. “Yeah! I mean, it isn’t what I thought I would be doing either.” Phil waves a hand. “I got my masters in film editing.”

“Oh wow. That’s actually really cool.”

Phil laughs a little. “I don’t ever use it now, but it was fun. I went through a phase of wanting to be a youtuber right around that time.”

“Are you serious?” 

“Yeah, ‘course I am. It’s embarrassing, I know, but at least a couple people seemed to like me. I did it until I needed to get a real job,” Phil says, making air quotes around “real job.” Or, his best attempt at it, Dan thinks. All of his fingers move like he’s making a claw. It shouldn’t be endearing, but it kind of is.

Dan laughs a little. “I had a channel too,” Dan says. “I was too scared to keep it up for very long, but - it was a thing.”

“Oh my gosh. I totally want to see that.”

Dan scoffs. “It was literally the most embarrassing thing I could have done.”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Phil says, wiggling his eyebrows. Or, trying to. 

Dan rolls his eyes. “Mate.”

“I’m sure it was cute,” Phil says, taking a sip of his drink. Dan hates the way his stomach flutters when Phil makes his voice a little softer, warmer.

“I’m not making any promises.”

“All right. Whatever you say.”

Phil brushes his foot up against Dan’s for a brief moment. Dan hides his smile behind his cup.

-

Phil catches Dan in the hallway after school hours.

“Hey!” he says, knocking his shoulder into Dan’s.

“Hello there.”

“Are you going to the Christmas party?”

Dan had gotten an email for the staff holiday party, but hadn’t given it much thought and deleted it.

“Probably not,” he says. “I don’t think that’s my thing.”

“You should come! There’s free food and booze, and - well, it’s always a bit of a disaster, but I think I would like it better if you were there.”

“Really?”

Phil nods eagerly, searching Dan’s face. They’re standing entirely too close for being in their place of work. Dan takes a small step back.

A holiday party with inebriated co workers sounds like his personal version of hell, but he can’t really resist when Phil is basically pouting at him, with that soft bottom lip and big blue eyes.

“Oh - whatever. Fine, I’ll come to the fucking Christmas party.”

“Language,” Phil tuts, but there’s no one around to hear them.

Dan rolls his eyes,

“You’ll need an ugly Christmas jumper.”

“I’m not buying one.”

Phil waves a hand around. “I have plenty, you can just borrow one,” because of course he does.

“Of course you do,” Dan mumbles.

He leaves the building with his heart feeling light.

-

Phil wasn’t lying when he said he had plenty of Christmas jumpers. Plenty might even be a bit of an understatement.

“Why the fuck do you need so many of these?” Dan asks, as Phil rummages through the section of them hanging up in his closet.

“I think they’re fun. Some people have called it endearing, you know.”

Dan does know. He supposes it is endearing, but he doesn’t want to admit that. “Sure, bub. Whatever you say.”

Phil hands him one with little aliens in Santa hats all over.

“Really?” Dan asks.

“What? It’s festive.”

“Sure.”

“It suits you too, but if you don’t like it I have llamas and jellyfish and -”

“Jellyfish?”

Phil pouts a little. “Jellyfish can be festive too.”

“I don’t buy that.”

Phil rolls his eyes. “Pick one,” he says, holding two up.

-

Dan goes with the llama jumper. It’s a little scratchy, but he gets a little thrill from wearing Phil’s clothes out in public. Even if it’s a fucking ugly Christmas jumper.

Phil insists that Dan meets some of the other teachers, and Dan goes along with it. 

“God, that guy’s grip was terrifying,” Dan says, fighting the urge to shake out his hand.

Phil chuckles. He smacks Dan lightly on the arm.

“Hey! Not you too.”

“That did not hurt.”

“It could have.”

“Whatever. Have you tried the mince pies yet? Janice makes the best ones.”

-

Dan’s a little tipsy.

Everything feels warm and light. Phil’s standing a little closer than necessary, a hand on Dan’s waist to guide him, or on his upper arm to point out someone in the crowd.

It’s less awkward than Dan thought it would be, especially since Phil is even more awkward than he is, if that’s even possible. Phil embraces the weird part of himself, which is like, super fucking weird, and Dan feels more comfortable by his side. 

Dan catches Phil’s eyes lingering on his lips and he knows this is headed somewhere.

Phil raises an eyebrow and cocks his head towards an empty corridor. Dan lets Phil guide him, and he goes easily. 

-

“Do you - oh fuck - do you want to go back to my place?”

Dan pulls back, close enough for his arms to still be wrapped around Phil. 

“Are there like, rules against that?”

“I don’t really care.”

Dan nods.

-

Phil takes him out for breakfast the next morning. 

“You haven’t lived until you’ve had American pancakes.”

“How much sugar is in that?” Dan asks, looking at Phil’s syrup loaded monstrosity. 

Phil huffs. “A perfectly normal amount, thank you very much. Besides, you like me sweet.”

Dan flushes a little. “Maybe I do. I’ll never tell.”

Phil kicks him from under the table. “Shut up.” 

“Why don’t you make me.”

Phil looks around and reaches over the table, cupping Dan’s face with his right hand. He plants a quick kiss on Dan’s mouth and pulls back with a smug look on his face. 

“Better?”

“Idiot.”

**Author's Note:**

> reblog on [tumblr](https://fairylocal.tumblr.com/post/639126123288084480/oh-im-in-trouble-now-t-2638-dan-looks-up-when) !


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